My Message to Anyone Fighting Back Against Depravity in America

And my prayer for whoever rises up to lead the charge.

“With each new evidence of deterioration, we lament for a moment, and then become accustomed to it.”

—Judge Robert Bork

Robert Bork, for those who weren’t around in 1987, was appointed by Ronald Reagan to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court created when Justice Powell resigned. I watched some of his confirmation hearing, and I remember thinking, “Now, that’s a smart man.” He was a strict originalist who thought that justices should simply interpret the constitution rather than legislate from the bench.

Unfortunately for America, his nomination was derailed, and we missed a great opportunity to have a truly brilliant man sitting on the court. By the way, one of the senators who led the successful charge against Bork was one Senator Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., who would become the 46th president of the United States. Bork would later say about Biden’s opposition that it "so thoroughly misrepresented a plain record that it easily qualifies as world class in the category of scurrility."

I had to look up that word — scurrility. Fortunately for me, I have my trusty Webster’s Dictionary right here next to my chair. What it means is that Bork accused Biden of making up damaging lies about him for the sole purpose of tarnishing his reputation. At the time, it was a new low for Supreme Court nominees. Sadly, it’s the norm now; we’ve become accustomed to it.

All of this sort of makes a point of Bork’s above quote from his 1996 book, “Slouching Toward Gomorrah.”

It’s now 26 years after Bork’s book, and I have to ask you, America: Was he right? We just thought America was cutthroat and crass back in the day. Few would disagree that we are far worse now than we were then.

However, where we are now, as bad as it seems to us, didn’t just pop out of thin air. It happened incrementally, slowly.

How does that happen? Think about it! A new form of depravity is introduced to us, and at first, we recoil in horror. We rise up in indignation, demanding that America return to its roots. But after a while, we become accustomed to it. We may not like it or even approve of it, but the weariness of fighting the battle soon becomes too intense, so we wring our hands and throw them up in the air as if to simply give up.

Before too long, we don’t even know what became of us. Our nation becomes unrecognizable, and we say, “I don’t even know who we are any more.” And it happened in such small steps that we never knew what hit us.

I understand! It’s frustrating! But the danger for believers is that we allow our frustration with America’s slide into moral filth to enrage us so much that we become angry culture warriors. I have no problem with pointing out culture’s flaws and sins, but we have to be careful that we don’t become people who fight for the “American Way” more than we fight Satan for control of the individuals in the culture. We should fight for the soul of our nation, but our battle to win others to the Kingdom of God is far more important. 

I hope that the United States and the liberties we enjoy outlast my time here. The kingdom of God is eternal, however, so my focus is on that.

The reason that it’s important to distinguish between nationalism and kingdom-of-God-ism is that nationalism of any kind often misses the wisdom of our Founders who rooted our republic deeply in their faith that our liberty originated in the mind of Creation’s God.  What this means is that right-wing Americanism is just as dangerous as left-wing anti-Americanism — IF the Almighty isn’t driving it. 

The reason that these extremes are dangerous is that any system without God is bound to miss the value of the individual. And the reason they miss the value of the individual is that they do not stop to consider one thing — that every human being, regardless of ethnicity, gender, or any other artificial division of mankind, bears the image of God. Even if someone’s behavior is sinful (and we’re all guilty of sin), they are still image bearers.

We cannot afford to miss this. And to help make practical application of this idea, consider the implications. Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Steve Bannon, you, me, and every single person in the United States and across the globe has been created in God’s image. Some may do a better job of reflecting the image they bear, but we all have it nonetheless. 

I tried to make this point in a documentary I did a few years ago, “Torchbearer.” The French Revolution did not have the same outcome as the American Revolution because the French failed to recognize that all men bear God’s image. The result of the godless revolution in France is that 40,000 people lost their heads to the guillotine. 

Here’s my point about Bork’s statement that the slide toward depravity begins slowly before it gains momentum and overwhelms the culture: I feel a backlash coming. People are angry, simmering as they watch the cable news shows chronicle our slide into moral and political oblivion. I don’t know, maybe smoldering is a better word.

Whatever the word is, I know that a smoldering fire runs the risk of erupting into a full-blown inferno that will consume everything in its path.

That’s not to say that I won’t welcome Americans waking from their slumber and rising up to confront this threat against our republic. I do pray, however, that whoever rises up to lead the charge against the depraved and wicked philosophies that are taking our government prisoner will remember the One who created us as they go about the business of reform. Otherwise, we will welcome the new boss who is the same as the old boss (my apologies to The Who).

But we must wake up and wake up soon if we’re going to stop this slide that is rapidly picking up steam. I don’t know which side the institutional church is going to come down on, but I can tell you this: I am one believer in Jesus Christ who’s praying for God to give him the wisdom to confront the godless philosophies that have fueled the slide in the first place. I proclaim Jesus Christ and him crucified.

My hope for America is that it gets a belly full of its wickedness and returns to the love of God. In my opinion, we’ve been sliding long enough.

I hope and pray I live long enough to see it.

Photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel on Unsplash